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UNYAILmG OF DIVINE JUSTICE 



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IN 



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THE GREAT REBELLION. 



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Ret. t. h. Robinson 



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V 







THE 



UNYAILING OF DIVINE JUSTICE 



IN 



THE GREAT REBELLION, 






Rey. t. h. Robinson 



JUNE 1, 1865. 



HARRISBURG: 

AMBROSE TAYLOR, PRINTER. 
1865. 






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Harrisburg, June 2, 1865. 
Rev. T. H. Robinson : 

Dear Sir : — The undersigned respectfully request, for publication, 
your sermon preached on the National Fast-day, June 1. 

There is a great desire among those who heard it that it should be 
published, in order that its timely and truthful and eloquent statements, 
illustrations and vindications of the hand of God in the history of the 
war for the Union, should have a wider circulation. 

Yours, 
John W. Hall, A. L. Russell, 

D. Fleming, Jno. C. Kunkel, 

J. W. Weir, Jno. J. Pearson, 

Henry Gilbert, Chas. L. Bailey. 

T. L. Cathcart, 



DISCOURSE. 



''Touching the Almighty, we canxot tind IIim out: He is excellent 

IN POWER, AND IN J ("Df.MENT, AND IN PLENTY OF JUSTICE." Job XXXVii. 23. 

I know no higher duty for times like these, than 
that of bringing the Hght of God's Word to shine upon 
the great events which are now commanding the atten- 
tion of men. We may listen to the voices of those, 
who, standing in places of power, speak as the repre- 
sentatives of the nation. We may give ear to those 
journals, which, while they claim to be the organs of 
public opinion, do themselves create that public opinion. 
There remains still a duty of uttering and of hearing 
those truths which God has been pleased to reveal, that 
have a bearing upon public affairs. 

Never in the history of the world has a nation been 
more clearly under a course of divine discipline, than 
this nation, during the last decade of years. The his- 
tory of ancient Israel did not throb and palpitate with 
the conscious presence of God, any more really than 
does our American history. If the Most High address- 
ed Israel in no such muttered, dark and groveling 
oracle as the gods of the Heathen addressed to their 
worshipers, so has He been speaking to us in none but 
the clearest and most impressive tones. If in the 

2 



centre of the world's ancient civilization, He gave an 
outspoken revelation of his will, a prompt answer to 
the prayers of his people, and vindicated a wise and 
just government against the barbaric violence of the 
Pagan nations, so again, in modern civilization, through 
his Word, and grandest providences, He has revealed 
his will; he has been the Hearer of prayer, and has 
vindicated a just government against the barbaric vio- 
lence of treason at home, and the hate of despotism 
abroad. If the classic Pagans, who worshiped carved 
wood, and chiseled marble, and molten brass, and who 
contemned, in their insolent ignorance, the Hebrew as 
a worshiper of empty air, because his God was a Spirit, 
was at length compelled to confess that their forged 
and rival deities could not stand before the Mighty 
Divinity of Israel; so too, the jealous nations that have 
been gibing at us, as a people given up of God to our 
own mad passions, and to swift destruction, are at 
length learning that our God has been in the midst of 
us, ruling, immovable and serene, in the lurid tempest 
of calamity, that has lowered and roared around us. 
He has not kept himself aloof from the turmoil, but 
has rode royally upon the storm, and yoked the whirl- 
winds of carnage and of civil war to the chariot of his 
own predestined triumph. The storm, that has dark- 
ened all our homes and activities, has been but the dust 
of his feet, as in dim and shrouded majesty, He came 
bringing a great salvation. 

As through all ancient providences, so also through 
all modern, do we find one and the same great princi- 
ple ruling. I know not how better to express it than 
by words that are in themselves a contradiction; the 



principle of concealment and of manifestation : — of 
mingled concealment and manifestation. God hides 
himself at the very moment when He is most marvel- 
ously present. He vails himself even in his most 
wonderful manifestations. "Clouds and darkness are 
round about him;" yet, at the very time, do we most 
impressively recognize the truth, that "justice and judg- 
ment are the habitation of his throne;" or, as the words 
of the text express it, in uttering the same truth, " Touch- 
ing the Almighty, we cannot find him out : He is ex- 
cellent in power, and in judgment, and in plenty of 
justice." 

I shall not pause to show you how nature illustrates 
this truth of Jehovah, vailing and yet revealing himself. 
I see not how any one can sit down in a summer's day, 
with the shade of the trees around him, and the wind 
rustling in their leaves ; how he can look upon a fair 
landscape of river and plain, of hill and encircling 
mountains, covered with their clustering forest; how 
he can look upon the sun going down beyond the misty 
hills, flinging its golden rays aslant the waters, filling 
up and flushing all the deeps of the mottled sky, with 
purple and gold; how through the gates of parting day, 
he can gaze upon the other worlds, that silently take 
their places in the heavens over him — worlds so distant, 
that their light has been thousands of years traveling 
to reach him : I see not how any one can look upon all 
this wondrous and beautiful scene, and not feel that 
there is only one w^ord that will embrace it all : God ! 

Nor shall I pause to show you how, from the manger 
where he lay a babe, to the cross, whereon he hung, a 
bruised and plaintive sufferer, the Saviour was a " God 



.8 

hiding himself;" yet how too, all along his career, in 
his discourses and in his miracles. He justified his title 
of " God manifest," by letting the streams of his majestic 
brightness and divineness break out, as through every 
window and loop-hole and crevice of the tabernacle, in 
which He walked. The mortal sunrising and sunset- 
ting of this "Day Star from on high" was begirt with 
clouds; yet that birth and life and death were but a 
continued manifestation of the principle I have stated — 
the covering up and the unfolding of the Divine 
Majesty. 

Nor need I pause to show you how, in his daily pro- 
vidence, God allows himself to seem to be entirely with- 
drawn and concealed, — to be indifferent to our highest 
interests, — to close his eye-lids on falsehood and wrong, 
onl,y that He may, by the trial and the doubt, waken 
in us a more loyal trust in him, as our ever-present 
Sovereign and Father. Through blinding tears and 
unlooked-for humiliations and disasters, and apparent 
desertions. He teaches us to walk by faith, and rest upon 
his unchangeable and all-sufficient nearness. In the 
train, often in the guise, of heaviest judgments, He 
sends the rarest mercies. The cloudy pillar was to 
ancient Israel a token of the Almighty presence and 
control, no less than vras' the pillar of fire. 

Walking, among them and before them, their van- 
guard and their rear guard. He 3^et hid himself from 
them ; nor was the sound of his stately footsteps heard 
in aU their camps. No eye caught sight of him. God 
was among them, constant, Avatchful, bounteous; yet 
He vailed himself. 

Let us turn rather, as we arc called to do by this 



9 

appointed day of humiliation and prayer, to the history 
of our own nation, during the last few years, and seek 
illustrations of the principle which I have stated. How 
often, in days of adversity and darkness, have we exag- 
gerated this trait of concealment in the Divine charac- 
ter; as if it were, on his part, abandonment and deser- 
tion ! We can now, from our high rock of safety, look 
back to times when we rolled fearfully on the deep; 
and when, in some sudden lurch given by the ship of 
State, under the stress of the storm, we cried out in 
horror and anguish, as if the helm of the universe had 
swept out of the Divine Pilot's hand ! What terribly 
anxious and doubtful days were those, when Senator 
after Senator left the Halls of Congress; when State 
after State broke the bands of union; when fort after 
fort, and arsenal after arsenal, were seized with traitor- 
ous hands; when timidity and cravenness reigned at 
the head of the nation; when of our acknowledged 
military leaders, scarcely one was left, save the old hero 
of Mexico; when our President-elect was compelled to 
reach the capital of the country in disguise; when by 
the bombardment of Sumter, the American people sud- 
denly learned that ivar was actually begun; when a few 
days later, all communication with the national capital 
and the President of the nation, was biockaded to the 
North, and the country was told by the mayor of a 
neighboring city, whose streets were sprinkled v/ith 
the blood of citizen soldiery, that no more of her defend- 
ers could pass through her precincts; and when again, 
shortly after, the gallant army, that left the capital with 
streaming banners and proud step, fled back again, in 
disgraceful and horrid rout, followed by shouting trai- 



10 

tors to the very doors! How well we remember the 
sudden paleness and shame that mantled the face of 
the nation ; and how we looked, in that hour of our 
first anguish, for the Most High, on the right hand and 
on the left, alike in vain; how we went backward and 
forward, but saw no proof of his nearness or of his 
interest in our concerns. "Touching the Almighty, 
we could not find him out :" but He soon proved him- 
self to be " Excellent in power, and in judgment, and 
in plenty of justice." 

Let us turn noAV to a survey of the great contest 
through which the American people have passed, and 
mark the development of wonderful providences. On 
the night of December twenty-sixth, eighteen hundred 
and sixty, Charleston bay witnessed the first, in that 
long line of stirring events, which have made it a second 
time famous in American history. In the historic fort 
of Moultrie, men were hurrying to and fro, in silent 
haste; gathering together all the moveable property of 
the fort, spiking the guns, burning gun-carriages, pre- 
paratory to a departure. It was strange work to be done 
in American waters, in an American fortress, and by 
loyal soldiery ; but that little garrison was surround- 
ed by scowling and deadly foes, and they well knew 
Moultrie could not hold a day against assault. Last 
of all the flag-staff" was cut down; and then the entire 
garrison, numbering but little over half a hundred men, 
crept silently into the boats, and with muffled oars, 
the full moon shining in a clear sky, sped across the 
sleeping waters; passing under the very bows of the 
guardship Nina, to the securer ramparts of Sumter. 
When the news reached the North, already humiliated 



11 

by the message of the President of the country, in an- 
swer to an insolent demand of South Carolina, guaran- 
teeing that the United States forces in Charleston harbor 
should not be reinforced, it sent a thrill through many 
hearts, that felt we were drifting silently toward a sea 
of fraternal blood. The Charleston Courier of the next 
day made the following announcement: — "Major Robert 
Anderson, U. S. A., has achieved the unenviable dis- 
tinction of opening civil war between American citizens, 
by an act of gross breach of faith. He has, under 
counsels of a panic, deserted his post at Fort Moultrie; 
and under false pretexts, has transferred his garrison, 
and military stores and supplies to Fort Sumter." 

Hear it! "A gross breach of faith!" "Deserted 
his post!" Southern chivalry brands the defence of 
the American flag, by a United States officer, sworn to 
defend it till death, as a "gross breach of faith!" as 
the "opening act of a civil war;" and the passage of 
the United States Government, in the person of one of 
her loyal sons, from one of her forts to another, across 
her own waters, as "desertion!" In what school of 
infamy were such lessons taught and learned? And 
the Secretary of War, a man whose honor had never 
been above reproach, resigned his high office, unable to 
"hold it longer under conviction of patriotism, nor with 
honor;" covering up under these specious words his 
fears of prosecution for robbing the Indian Trust Fund. 

A few hours after Major Anderson had reached 
Sumter, he summoned his little force around the flag- 
staff, for the purpose of raising on it the banner brought 
from Moultrie. The chaplain offered a fervent prayer 
that the God of our Fathers would inspire that little 



12 

garrison to maintain the honor of their country's flag 
unsullied through the trials that awaited them; and as 
the little band responded, with a deep Amen, Major 
Anderson, on bended knee, and with head uncovered, 
drew the national emblem to the top of the staff. 

"Then the loud huzzas rung out, far and widely o'er the sea! 
They shouted for the stripes and stars, the standard of the free ! 
Every eye was fixed upon it, every heart beat warm and fast, 
As with eager lips they promis-ed to defend it to the last !'' 

Three months and a half of gloom and of apprehen- 
sion passed by; months of grand forbearance on the 
part of the loyal North; months of angry preparation 
in the South. South Carolina, always leader in acts 
of disloyalty, raised a provisional army, and arrayed 
around Sumter a besieging force of seven thousand 
men. Moultrie and Castle Pinckney were strengthened, 
and many new batteries erected along the shores of the 
bay; till upon the devoted band they had concentra- 
ted a converging fire of one hundred and forty guns, 
many of them of very heavy calibre. All supplies 
were cut off. The garrison was reduced almost to the 
point of starvation. On the twelfth of April, eighteen 
hundred and sixty-one, at half past two o'clock in the 
morning, in answer to a demand from General Beaure- 
gard to surrender. Major Anderson replied, "I will 
evacuate the fort by noon of the fifteenth, should I not 
receive, prior to that time, controlling instructions from 
my government, or additional supplies." Fifty minutes 
latet-y such was the atrocious thirst to open the war, 
and to "fire the southern heart," the following note was 
placed in the hands of Major Anderson, by a former 
United States Senator :—" Sir : By authority of Briga- 



13 

dier General Beauregard, commanding the provisional 
forces of the Confederate States, we have the honor to 
notify you, that he will open the fire of his batteries 
on Fort Sumter, in one hour from this time." In one 
hour, at half-past four o'clock in the morning of April 
twelfth, eighteen hundred and sixty-one, the bombard- 
ment began! For four and thirty hours the balls and 
shells of one hundred and forty guns thundered against, 
or dropped within, the walls of the doomed fortress. 
Throughout the first day, the heroes of Sumter threw 
back the nation's defiance in swift and solid iron. At 
seven o'clock of the next day, Sumter re-opened fire, 
and the guns of the little patriot band again made a 
most gallant defence. At eight o'clock, the officers' 
quarters were fired by a rebel shell — at ten o'clock a 
shot struck down the flag — at noon most of the wood- 
work of the fort was burning, and suffocating flames 
and smoke penetrated everywhere — a little later our 
men ceased firing; while through driving smoke and 
flying cinders, they rolled out ninety barrels of gun- 
powder to prevent explosion; and then at last, their 
quarters entirely burned, the main gates of the fort 
destroyed by fire, the magazines surrounded by flames, 
four barrels and three cartridges of powder only being 
available, and no provisions left but pork, they accepted 
terms of evacuation; and on Sunday afternoon of April 
fourteenth, eighteen hundred and sixty-one, they 
marched out of the fort, with colors flying and drums 
beating; bearing away company and private property, 
and saluting their flag with fifty guns. So marched 
they forth, those bronzed men of war, humiliated in the 



14 

eyes of traitors — glorified in the eyes of all loyal and 
true men for ages to come. 

Four terrible years of national agony, in which we felt, 
many, many times, that God was hiding himself, rolled 
away — Oh so slowly and heavily. They seemed to 
carry on them the weight of centuries. The bread of 
affliction was given us to eat, and the water of tears to 
drink. Our homes were made dark and desolate. 
Bereavement smote us. We lay down by tens of thou- 
sands in hospitals and dungeons and unmarked graves. 
The hour of compensation came. On the fourteenth 
of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-five, the fourth 
anniversary of that day when the symbol of the national 
authority was lowered at Sumter, a second gather- 
ing was seen within the scarred and battered walls of 
that old fortress. Some of the old heroes are there, 
emblazoned with the stars of their country's love and 
honor. Major Anderson, now General, is there with 
his pale and spiritual face. And who does not feel that 
there was a pecuHar fitness, decorousness, an intrinsic 
propriety, in the order of the Chief Magistrate, that on 
the very spot where the national majesty was first 
dethroned, it should be reinstated — that there, in sight 
of the birth-place of the grand conspiracy, and of the 
grave of its chief sponsor, the hands that had reverently 
taken down the flag, and folded it up, and borne it 
away, should unfurl it again, and raise it high in air. 
Once again they kneel around the flag-staff of Sumter; 
the old chaplain in his place ; magnates of the nation, 
and men who had become famous in war, surrounding; 
prayer once more, from loyal lips, re-baptizes the place; 
and then General Anderson, after a few modest words 



15 

of gratitude to God, that he had lived to see the day, 
raises to the mast of Sumter, the identical flag that had 
been lowered four years before ; and as the tumultuous 
cheers of thousands die away, old Sumter speaks 
again; her enraptured voice thunders a salute of one 
hundred guns to her ancient flag; the free waters of 
the bay laugh in their gladness, and from Moultrie and 
Johnson and Putnam, and other forts and batteries, a 
hundred loyal guns respond; and over the conquered 
city a hundred loyal flags gleam ! Then was Jehovah's 
ordinance of earthly government vindicated and glori- 
fied on the very spot where it had been insulted and 
humbled. " Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him 
out: He is excellent in power, and in judgment, and 
in plenty of justice." 

Let us look upon another illustration. In the winter 
of eighteen hundred and sixty and sixty-one, men clad 
in the robes of our American Senate and Hall of Rep- 
resentatives, were traitorously plotting treason in those 
sacred places, and murderously lighting the torch that 
should lay in ashes our republican nationality. They 
were the representatives of three hundred thousand 
men, whose politics and religion were founded upon 
this first principle — that every man who stole or 
sold his brother, was a gentleman and born to rule ; 
and that he who made his own living was not. They 
were the men who, for forty years, had been able to 
keep the government in tremors of dread; to dictate 
terms of fellowship by threatening disunion; who for 
seventy years had been setting up and pulling down 
parties, controlling the nation's policy, giving it its cha- 
racter abroad, and governing the very religion of the 



16 

land. They were the men that demanded and revoked 
compromises, at their own pleasure; that imprisoned 
our citizens, at their will; that searched our ships for 
dangerous passengers; and at their own whim lynched 
northern men. They were the men who said, "abolish 
free speech : it is a nuisance;" and it was done; who 
controlled our States, our cities, our presses, our pulpits, 
our politics, our very workshops, as if they were their 
own; and who, when they saw they were about to lose 
the ruling and shaping of the government, determined 
to sail out of it. You remember the lordly and in- 
famous valedictories of these men, as they strode, 
haughty, and unharmed, though covered with treason, 
from our national halls — with what scorn they shook 
off the dust of their feet against us, and gathered their 
robes about them, and said they would return when the 
national capital should be the capital of their new 
empire. 

You will remember, too, how that but one man from 
all those States was bold enough, and true enough, to 
lift his voice, in tones of thunder; and to pierce this 
opening treason with the furious flash of a patriot's eye. 
You will recall, how when Senator Toombs, of Georgia, 
uttered, on the floor of the United States Senate, the 
infamous sentiment, that "When traitors become nume- 
rous, treason becomes respectable," Andrew Johnson 
rebuked him, and declared, that whether traitors were 
few or many, he would wage war with them, to the bit- 
ter end : and how when they stalked out of the hall, 
he called to them, "If I were the President of the 
United States, I would seize and hang every one of 
you." The nation trembled in those days, when Davis 



17 

and Benjamin, and Mason and Slidell, and Breckinridge 
and Toombs, and their associates in guilty treason, 
marched from the national halls, with the safety of 
honest men, and the tread of conquerors. Their life- 
long servants and worshipers, in the North, paled and 
shook, as if Providence had gone forth with them. But 
to-day, how stands it with these men, and with that 
one noble man, whom a few months later they drove 
from his family and home, in Tennessee, with the venom 
of bloodhounds? 

Some of them are filling traitor's graves : others are 
loathed and despicable wanderers in foreign lands : 
others are skulking in disguise amid the swamps of the 
South ; the price of treason on their heads, and the 
blood of patriots on their souls ; never again to enter 
the halls of the nation, save as prisoners to be im- 
peached for their high crimes, before the nation's judg- 
ment bench : the arch-conspirator and ring-leader of 
this largest, fiercest and most tenacious rebellion known 
to history, caught while a panting fugitive; blotting 
out even the last vestige of manly honor by a humili- 
ating disguise — now a prisoner awaiting trial : the 
boasted Confederacy, born of the pit, pierced through 
and through, cloven again and again, its forts wrested 
from them, its rivers and bays patrolled by our gun- 
boats, its legions routed, utterly overthrown, driven like 
chafiF by the northern hurricane, overtaken, confronted, 
flanked, crushed — ^its great generals, the treacherous 
sons of West Point, in our hands, the Governors of its 
States hiding in by-places ; and now at last, from end 
to end, and from side to side, from Manasses to the Rio 
Grande, not a breath of air tainted by the fluttering of 



18 

their traitorous flag : while sitting in the Chair of State, 
honored of God and of men, holding in his hands par- 
dons to dispense, as he will, to humbled and penitent 
conspirators, Andrew Johnson, in 1861, " faithful only 
among the faithless." " Touching the Almighty, we 
cannot find him out : He is excellent in power, and in 
judgment, and in plenty of justice." 

Again : when we go back, to look for the public actors, 
upon whom rests a large share of the responsibility for 
this rebelhon, we cannot omit another prominent class 
of men in the South. The revolution in public opinion 
was too universal and too radical to be occasioned 
wholly by the craft and jugglery of politicians. The 
deep foundations of the popular will were not broken 
up by the utterances of mere party platforms. The 
testimony of southern statesmen and southern presses 
clearly avows and establishes this fact, that for the in- 
ception, advocacy, progress and consequences of the 
great treason and rebellion, no class in the South stands 
to-day more responsible than do the southern ministry 
and the leading laymen of the southern churches. 
They were the teachers of the people. Before any act 
of separation had taken place, leading clergymen ad- 
vocated, from the pulpit, the whole doctrine of secession; 
and called upon the people " to walk to victory through 
a baptism of blood." They counseled open and armed 
resistance if Mr. Lincoln should be chosen the Presi- 
dent of the nation. Such men as Drs. Thornwell, Pal- 
mer, Adger, Smyth and Moore, of the Presbyterian 
church ; Bishops Polk, Elliott and Green, of the Epis- 
copal church ; and the leading men of the Methodist, 
Baptist, and other churches — exerted so mighty an 



19 

influence upon the southern people, from the pulpit, the 
press, and the stump, as to draw from one of their own 
statesmen the infamous compliment, " that the revolu- 
tion was accomplished mainly by the churches ; and 
that but for them it would have been a failure ;" that 
the Confederacy was " the grand creation of the South- 
ern Church" — " the creature of her prayers and labors." 
Repeatedly is it asserted that the Church led and con- 
trolled the politicians ; and this fearful responsibihty 
for the rebellion and its horrors, the ministry and church 
claimed ; they gloried in it ; and were so jealous of the 
honor as to refuse to divide it with the politicians ; de- 
claring that the conspiracy " was due, not to the tricks 
of the demagogue, nor to the eloquence of renowned 
orators, nor to the instructions of retired sages, but to 
the uprising of the ministry and the church." Be it so 
then, since they will have it ; and let God reward them 
according to their works. To them were the southern 
people indebted for the grand idea that they were " set 
of God to conserve and perpetuate in the earth the 
institution of slavery." To them, too, are we indebted 
for all that horrible barbarity that starved our patriot 
soldiers by tens of thousands. The leading Christianity 
of the South lifted no voice against it ; but gave it the 
sanction of silent acquiescence, or of open approval. 

And to-day, how has the providence of God left these 
teachers of disloyalty and treason, and their churches, 
and the few sympathizing clergy who abandoned the 
loyal North, saying to these worshipers of slavery, 
" thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God?" 
The heavy hand of judgment has fallen upon them. 
Some who took the sword have fallen by the sword. 



20 

Others are wandering mendicants. Spme who fled 
southward in their love of treason, are fleeing north- 
ward in their want of bread. Their churches are de- 
solated ; their vested properties are utterly lost ; their 
boards of missions, education, publication, are swept 
away; their church members are scattered like lost 
sheep; their whole country has become missionary 
ground, for a purer and truer gospel, to be supported 
by the churches of the North. The institution they 
were "ordained of God to conserve and perpetuate," 
has " died by visitation of Grod ;" and they stand out- 
side the sympathy of the Christian world, guilty of 
schism, guilty of treason, guilty of innocent blood- 
shedding ; and will be permitted to re-enter the com- 
munion of the American churches, only when they 
acknowledge their errors, and repent of their sins. 
" Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out : He 
is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in plenty 
of justice." 

Look once again, how the deep-laid providence of 
God circumvents the haughty poUcy and the puny 
efforts of man. It is now too well known to admit of 
any doubt, that a part of the original scheme of the 
rebel leaders was to establish an aristocracy, if not a 
monarchy, in the southern portion of the Republic. 
They sought the perpetual degradation of the hard- 
toiling, laboring classes, by making wealthy capital the 
owner of working poverty. They sought to make labor 
dishonorable. They claimed for themselves the honor 
of rearing a nobler civilization, and of nursing a rare 
and true chivahy, like that of the old Paladins and 
Bayards. The slaveholder's relation to his bondmen 



21 

has for years been eulogized by themselves and their 
northern servitors, as something patriarchal, grand, re- 
ligious ; the voucher of a purer social state. In their 
school books, they taught their youth that southern 
society lacked only titles to make it the peer of the 
nobler classes of Europe. We know with what super- 
cilious haughtiness they proclaimed this on the floor of 
the American Senate ; with what contempt they treated 
our northern society; how insolently they acted in our 
northern cities and watering places; regarding them- 
selves as an order of nobles, a privileged caste; how 
the virus of their influence penetrated every fibre of 
society at our national capital; and with what a trucu- 
lent meanness men bowed and cringed to their arrogant 
pretensions. The essential spirit of the southern re- 
bellion was manifested by one of themselves, when he 
said, "We, people of the South, will not submit to be 
governed by a man who has come up, as Abe Lincoln 
has, from the ranks of the common people." It was 
this spirit that gave them the sympathy of the aristo- 
cracies of the Old World. It was this that quickened the 
rejoicings of the down-trodden millions at their down- 
fall. It was this that, in the opening years of war, in- 
spired them with the fatal belief that the free North 
was inhabited by a race of cravens ; of whom five would 
be a bare match for one of their bold sons. But mark 
now, how, in the avenging wisdom of God, this vaunted 
superiority in knightly valor, and honor, and refine- 
ment, and courtesy, has been left to fill up, before the 
loathing nations, the full measure of its shame. It was 
this chivalry that bullied free-speech for years, by the 
gleam of the bowie knife ; that bludgeoned unresisting 



22 

Senators in the National Council Chamber; that inau- 
gurated the bloodiest ruffianism in the new territories ; 
and that, after the war opened, having been nourished 
for years on the streaming blood of the slave, famished 
and crazed its white prisoners, at Andersonville, Salis- 
bury, and Belle Isle; that, at Fort Pillow, butchered 
its surrendered, disarmed and unresisting enemy, 
because of their dusky skin; that carved into finger- 
rings the bones of their foemen, fallen in battle ; that 
undermined their famous prison, with the intent of hurl- 
ing to instant death hundreds of innocent men: it was 
this chivalry that planned the burning of northern hotels, 
with their unarmed inmates, many of them helpless 
women and children; that employed agents to transport 
boxes of infected clothing into our large cities, to our Na- 
tional Capital, to the very house of our President ; there 
to spread disease and death on the widest scale ; and that, 
lastly, as a supplement of failure, by all other means, 
human and diabolical, inaugurated private assassination. 
All this was the work of that vaunting, elate, defiant 
chivalry, permitted of God its high broad stage of glory- 
ing, and its full tether of development; with the intent 
that it might earn its merited execration, and go down 
under a tempest of unanimous abhorrence. Let chivalry 
stand hereafter, in the dialect of loyal speech, as the 
synonym of all that is dishonorable, inglorious and 
mean. • " Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him 
out : He is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in 
plenty of justice." 

Again : when, one after another, the States of the 
South sought to withdraw from the Urfion, declared 
themselves to be no longer bound by the Constitution, 



23 

and no longer parts of the nation, they rested their 
action, so far as they deigned to account for it, on the 
ground that the United States were nothing more 
than a confederation, bound by a mere compact; which 
could be broken, whenever the interests or the whim 
of any party thereto so dictated. They asserted, that 
the American Republic was a league of friendship, for 
common defence, for the security of liberties, and the 
mutual welfare ; not a nation : that it was a Confede- 
racy ; not a people : a congeries of States ; not a 
Union : and that, as each State had come into it, of its 
own accord, it might sail out of it, at its own will. You 
will remember the cry of "no coercion," started by 
traitors, and re-echoed by northern friends, when the 
government began to use force, to bring the refractory 
to their duties. Under the power of a terrible lie, often 
repeated, that there was no organic bond between the 
States, we were dropping apart, as grains of sand in 
an hour-glass. Disintegration threatened us. Already 
visions of half a dozen jarring republics rose before us. 
Cities talked of seceding from States. The right to dis- 
solve partnership, and break up the household, was 
bruited about on every side. The people awoke to the 
issue and the danger. They determined to decide the 
question in the crimson court of war. Pushing aside 
all these pernicious ideas, and all propositions for com- 
promise that involved them, they took up arms, in de- 
fence of the integrity and sovereignty of the nation. 
They asserted that these United States are but ano- 
ther name for the American State. They went forth 
to a hundred battle-fields, saying. The solemn, author- 
itative voice of the nation shall be the supreme law of 



24 

the land ; higher than the will of any part of the peo- 
ple, whether individuals or States. They fell by hun- 
dreds of thousands, saying, We are American citizens ; 
the members of a developed, completed nationality; 
and our widest, highest rights are those which are sup- 
ported by the power, and involved in the dignity, of 
the entire nation. 

And now, how has the providence of Grod decided the 
great contest between the sovereignty of the whole, and 
the sovereignty of the part? It has been settled that the 
American Union is a vital, throbbing, indivisible organ- 
ism, pervaded by one life. In the utter breaking up of 
the Confederacy — in the flight of governors and legisla- 
tures — in the complete remanding of all state govern- 
ments into the hands of the general government — ^in that 
great work ef reconstruction now going on, and which is 
intrusted only to men who acknowledge the supremacy 
of the nation over the state — do we hear the people of 
the country uttering anew the words of their fathers : 
" This Constitution, and the laws of the United States, 
made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties under the 
authority of the United States, shall he the supreme law 
of the land; anything in the constitution or laws of any 
State, to the contrary notwithstanding." Before these 
words, re-asserted in the roll of every loyal cannon, em- 
phasized by every shout of the loyal victors, endorsed 
by the sign-manual of every drop of loyal blood, the 
fierce invective and boast of the Southern traitor, and 
the feeble sophistry of the Northern, die away. By the 
blood of martyred patriots, who have lain down in 
death beside their martyred generals and their martyred 
Head, the Union, the object of our deepest desire, i8 



25 

cemented anew — to be " now and forever, one and in- 
separable." " Touching the Almighty, we cannot find 
him out: He is excellent in power, and in judgment, and 
in plenty of justice." 

Again : another of the chief ends for which the re- 
bellion was inaugurated was the arrest and destruction 
of the spirit of liberty, and the security and perpetua- 
tion of human bondage. Yet at the very time they 
invoked the violence of war, everything favored them ; 
lynch-law in Carolina, mob-law in New York. At their 
behest, anti-slavery meetings were broken up at the 
North. They had gags upon the lips of our statesmen, 
and chains around our court-houses. They muzzled 
our pulpits, they ruled our presses, they expurgated 
our publications, they rifled the government mails, they 
spoke through our supreme judiciary. Opening a single 
duel with the fanatical John Brown, they went on to 
merge it into a general war, whose grand issue should 
be the supremacy of slavery. God accepted the issue — 
not we. At the commencement of the struggle, there 
was a divine concealment of the real issue from the 
body of the people. We were not ripe for it, nor able 
to bear it. We only wished to contend for the Consti- 
tution, as it was. We asked no change. We were 
ready for compromises even. We declared, in our Na- 
tional Council, " that neither Congress, nor the people, 
nor the government of* the non-slaveholding States, 
have a constitutional right to legislate upon, or to inter- 
fere with, slavery in any of the slaveholding States of 
the Union." We did not accept the thought that God 
was opening a line of providences, which would over- 
turn the giant wrong of human bondage. But the 



26 

great issue rose before us, persistently lifted up by 
grand providences, which we could not control. Slowly 
our eyes gained clearness of perception. We saw men, 
as trees, walking. The nation cared but little for jus- 
tice to the black man. We offered a compensated 
emancipation, as the price of peace ; and were ready to 
pay it, at any conceivable price. The offer and the 
thought were madly rejected. Only after years of sac- 
rifice and blood, did even that noblest and wisest man 
among us, who, last of all, was the nation's great sacri- 
fice on the altar of hberty, reach a measure of wiUing- 
ness that the issue of slavery should be in the war at 
all. God — I speak it reverently — brought us to it. 
At length both North and South saw that it was the 
one grand question. They of the South would fight 
for slavery, as the corner-stone of their new empire, 
and as a divine institution. God permitted them to 
fight, until they were compelled to promise liberty to 
their slaves, if they would help them in the wasting 
conflict. Yea ; and He also permitted the struggle to 
go on, with terrible defeats for us, with broken hopes 
and darkened homes, until, in the light of our increasing 
sacrifices, we should read the ineradicable barbarism of 
slavery ; and vow, in just wrath, to make an utter end 
of a social system, that paused not to hack and stab at 
any right, or any life. He made the very champions 
of the institution, at the moment they deemed them- 
selves to be its heroic avengers, his delegated exposi- 
tors of its true hideousness, and the unconscious execu- 
tioners of their own idol. "Just as the curse, invoked 
by the Jews on the head of the Crucified, came hurt- 
ling back in bloody rain on themselves and on their 



27 

children's children, through long centuries and across 
wide continents ;" so the first shot fired at Sumter, in 
defence of slavery, has been flying back in swift, hard, 
terrible blows upon them, until they are glad to bury 
the cause of their war out of their sight. The slaugh- 
terers of right have been God's agents in slaughtering 
the giant wrong, which they had insanely clothed in 
the garments of a god. The man whom they most 
hated signed the death-warrant of American slavery. 
In a document, which was his last message, Abraham 
Lincoln had spoken of God's possible purpose to com- 
pensate each drop of blood, drawn by the driver's lash, 
by another drop of blood, streaming from the soldier's 
sword. A few days earlier, he had said, " If this coun- 
try cannot be saved, without giving up the principle, 
that the weight shall be lifted from the shoulders of all 
men, and that all shall have an equal chance, I was 
about to say, / ivould rather he assassinated on the spot 
than surrender itT Slavery set the clumsy seal of its 
own bloody endorsement to these heroic words, by dash- 
ing the blood of the utterer upon the face of his last 
message ! And by that act of the assassin, slavery's 
last champion, "it effectually nailed to the mast of State, 
the banner of universal, unconditional, uncompensated 
and unrepealable emancipation." Shut thine accursed 
doors, oh slave marts, where humanity was bought and 
sold ! Rot in the blistering sun, oh slave-ship ; nor let 
a traitorous wind ever send thee again on thy mission 
of woe ! Melt in the furnace, oh fetters of iron ; and 
let thy molten flood pour forth into moulds of the plow- 
share and the pruning-hook. Sink, oh hated system, 
under the poison of thine own hate, sl^outing thine own 



28 

doom, till no monument of thy barbarism is left on the 
soil of our regenerated Republic. " Touching the Al- 
mighty, we cannot find him out : He is excellent in 
power, and in judgment, and in plenty of justice." 

But the most remarkable providence of the war may 
be traced in the life, the character, and the death of 
that man, who was God's chief instrument in defeating 
treason, and saving the country. Let us touch the 
salient points of his history. 

He was born of lowly, but respectable parentage, in 
Kentucky, February twelfth, eighteen hundred and nine. 
In eighteen hundred and sixteen, his parents removed to 
Indiana; and in his new home, the boy Abraham grew 
to be a young man. His advantages were very limited. 
He spent his youth in toil; and obtained, in the aggre- 
gate, but a single year's common-school education. At 
the age of twenty-one, he removed with his father to 
Illinois; and in the following year, was employed, ag 
one of the hands, in navigating a flat-boat, down the 
Mississippi, to New Orleans. The following year, 
eighteen hundred and thirty-two, he served his country 
for three months, as the captain of a volunteer com- 
pany, in the Blackhawk war. He then began the study 
of law; and two years later, at the early age of twenty- 
five years, he was elected to the legislature of his State, 
by a triumphant vote. In eighteen hundred and forty- 
six, at the age of thirty-seven, he was one of the 
acknowledged political leaders of the State, in opposition 
to the repeal of the Missouri compromise. In eighteen 
hundred and fifty-eight, occurred the famous contest 
between him and Judge Douglas, for the United States 
Senatorship; in which, though he lost the prize, he had 



29 . 

a majority of the popular vote. Two years later, he 
was nominated, elected and inaugurated as the sixteenth 
President of the United States. Little more than a 
month elapsed, when the grand conspiracy inaugurated 
civil war, by opening the fire of one hundred and forty 
guns upon Fort Sumter. Then slowly and heavily 
rolled on the four years of mingled woe and glory, that 
brought out the simple, massive and patient greatness 
of this foremost man of the age. And, as from our 
harbor of safety, we look back upon those perilous years, 
and behold the ship of State plunging wildly amid the 
surging seas, and grating heavily on foundering reefs, 
one man we see, walking the decks with a quiet intre- 
pidity; his great heart ever true and trustful, his clear 
brain ever vigilant and comprehensive, his strong hand 
ever firm and untrembling; his brow calm, placid and 
hopeful, when all others were pale with fears. In No- 
vember, eighteen hundred and sixty-four, the people 
by an almost unprecedented electoral majority, though 
amid storms of abuse and detraction, reinstated him in 
his high office. On the fourteenth of April, eighteen 
hundred and sixty-five, on the evening of that day, 
when, in token of the re-establishment of the national 
sovereignty, the national flag was re-uplifted on the 
ramparts of Sumter, he, the hope of the people, is 
smitten down, not by the hand of a lone assassin, but 
by the last foul blow of an expiring rebellion. Once 
again, as the news of the horrible deed sped athwart 
the' land, covering their faces with paleness, men felt, 

"The day of the Lord is at hand, at hand! 
Its storms-roll up the sky;" 

And they asked, is the God of justice indifferent, that 



30 

He permits this butchery of so wise, so generous, so 
patriotic a ruler? But mark, how Providence rolls 
back the cloud, unvails his own designs, and furthers his 
own ends. The cry of the murderer, as he brandished 
the dagger, "so perish the tyrant evermore," was in- 
tended to be the verdict of mankind, and of history, 
against the murdered. It has become the verdict of 
mankind, of history, and of God, against the murderers, 
and against the tyrannical system that bred them. Per- 
haps the nation and the world needed this one most 
malign outbreak, and this one renowned sacrifice ; that, 
in one foul deed, they might see the whole nature and 
disposition of slavery. It had long been working evil 
before our blinded eyes. It had destroyed pubhc morali- 
ty, and bred treachery in senates, and councils, and 
places of public trust. It had corrupted manhood, to 
its very centre. It had smitten the whole moral nature 
of its supporters with death. It had poisoned their 
domestic virtue, their patriotism and their religion. It 
wanted only this last, stealthy l)low, and glut of an 
eminent victim, to set slavery, in its true nature, before 
a gazing and loathing universe- That blow was intended 
to send down the memory of Abraham Lincoln to the 
future, covered with disgrace. But mark again; how 
under the guiding hand of Providence, it has rounded 
the career of this immortal man into epic symmetry, and 
given him a crown of victory, that resembles the palm of 
religious martyrdom. It has a grace and fitness about it 
too, that one so good and grand as he, should go from duty 
done, to mingle with the fathers and founders of the re- 
public, whose cherished plans he carried out, with pulse 
high, with strength full, and nerve strong; terminating 



^1 

as noble life in a seemly manner. He died, with his 
armor on; in the heart of patriotic consultation; just re- 
turned from camp and council, and the presence of con- 
quering legions. No slow fever dried his blood. No 
waste consumed him. He fell as his thousands had 
fallen on the field of battle, suddenly, and in the hour 
of victory. A man, from among the people; a man 
who would have wept and bled for the poorest drum- 
mer-boy of his great army — it was fitting, that in his 
death, he should be joined, in a common experience, 
with the hundreds, and the thousands, who without note* 
or name, suddenly fell for their country : that, as the 
nation, in all the future, thinks upon him, it may be of 
him, as one who, in the heavens, which are now his 
home, stands among the world's greatest, truest and 
best workers. 

And Oh! what mourning has there been for him, as 
he suddenly went from the nation's burdens, and en- 
trenched his place in its perpetual memory — wailing in 
hamlet and cottage, in the crowded city, and lonely 
wild; wailing among the dusky millions, who worshiped 
him as theu' Moses. The tears of a great people fall 
upon his bier. The nation rises to escort him to the 
place of the dead. 

"He has gone, who seemed so great; 

Gone; but nothing can bereave him 

Of the force he made his own, 

Being here; and we believe him 

Something far advanced in state; 

And that he wears a truer crown 

Than any wreath that man can weave him." 

In the centre of the great continent, in tile bosom of 
the West, from which he sprung, we have laid his 



32 

dust to rest. There, as in a vast cathedral, we have 
left all that is mortal of our beloved ruler ; and the 
weeping nation says. Rest, great, tender, care-worn 
heart, and we will take care of thy fame ; and to our chil- 
dren and our children's children, will rehearse the sim- 
ple mighty words, the firm and gentle hfe of our second 
Washington. 

Nor here alone has justice been done him, in the 
tears of his own people; but from across the oceans, 
from all the nations of Europe, from highest cabinets 
and lowliest homes, from the lovers of liberty every- 
where, from the four quarters of the world, come the 
condolence and the sigh of the widest mourning the 
world has ever known. Thus did the Providence on 
high, by means of so tragic and foul a death, lift ,the 
name and memory of Abraham Lincoln to a loftier 
niche, shelving it apart from all predecessors, and from 
all successors; giving to an unknown, reproached and 
despised man, a confidence, and an homage, and a fame, 
never before so widely granted to one of his race. 
" Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out : He 
is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in plenty 
of justice." 

I have detained you too long over the thrilling les- 
sons of this heroic time, and shall utter but one of the 
many more things that crowd upon me. The blow that 
struck our chief, was aimed, through him, at the life 
of the republic — at America. You and I, and all of us, 
were meant. It was hoped that the nation, suddenly 
deprived of its ruler, would, in its despair, reel and 
plunge and sink in hopeless anarchy. National life was 
struck at. Liberty was struck at. Government, human- 



ity, here, everywhere, were struck at. It was a blow 
aimed at mankind. But the nation stands more solid 
than ever. The government is stronger than ever. 
The people are braver. Liberty is more hopeful and 
buoyant than ever. Repubhcan institutions have not 
quivered at the blow. Without a break, or a jar, the 
government moves on. The nation gathers round the 
retiring leader's bier, drops its tears on his beloved face, 
lays him kindly and reverently down to rest, and then 
closes up, fast and firm, around his successor ; with a 
new and a lofty purpose that the nation shall stand for 
the ages, as the monument of her martyred patriot, 
statesman, emancipator and friend. 

And now, to what does Cod call us on this day of 
mourning ? I say not to what does He call our govern- 
ment ; for it, I beheve, in its measure of public justice, 
is grandly executing the will of God. I leave the 
law, and the execution of justice, in the hands where 
God has placed them ; satisfied justice will be done, 
and not overdone. • 

For us, for the loyal people of the land, there is a 
noble conquest ; a conquest of light and love, of gene- 
rosity and forgiveness, as we seek to imitate the high 
and patient temper of our late thoughtful and magnani- 
mous chieftain. Let it be ours to build up the waste 
places of a conquered and helpless people; to upheave 
all roots of bitterness; to sow upon the track of desola- 
tion the seeds of liberty and Christian love; to let the 
common people know, that if they are disposed to come 
back into the old home, with the early love, we will 
meet them " a great way off." And as the blood of 
New England and of the West, of the Middle States 



34 

and the South, of mountain-side, ocean-side and prairie, 
has been sprinkled through the whole field of our war- 
fare ; and as the dead of the whole land lie side by side, 
in far-distant but fraternal cemeteries, giving a title to 
every State, in this precious planting of our strength, 
and our glory in it ; let us, with one mind, one will, 
one heart, build. up a nationality, where there shall be 
no North, no South, no East, no West : where there 
shall be known but one title — American : where there 
shall be but one temple for our common thanksgiving ; 
and forever and for aye, but one loyal and fraternal 
impulse shall rule the hearts of all who have come out 
of our great tribulation. Along our stormy turbulences, 
God's great purposes have been throbbing. In our 
battle-blasted furrows, He has been sowing his righteous 
grain. Out of our days of pain. He has already brought 
us a large, calm peace. 

"Beneath our brimming tears, 

Lies nobler cause for siuging. 
Than ever in the shining years, 

When all our vales were ringing 
With happy sounds of mellow peace; 

And all our cities thundered 
With lusty echoes, and our seas, 

By freighted keels were sundered. 

For lo ! the branding flails that drave 

Our husks of foul self from us. 
Show all the watching heavens, we have 

Immortal grain of promise. 
And lo ! the dreadful blast that blew, 

In gusts of fire amid us, 
Have scorched and winnowed, from the true, 

The falseness that undid us. 

Wherefore, ransomed people, shout; 

0, banners, wave in glory! 
bugles, blow the triumph out! 

drums, strike up the story! 



35 

Clang broken fetters, idle swords I 
Clap hands, States, together ! 

And let all praises be the Lord's — 
Our Saviour and our Father." 



Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the 
Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and 
ever shall be, world without end. Amen. 



-,-^ 



